Archive | November 12, 2003

O’Reilly Network: PTO Director Orders Re-Exam for ‘906 Patent. “In what could be good news for the Web, the Director of the US Patent and Trademark Office has ordered a re-examination of the ‘906 patent, which was the subject of a patent infringement lawsuit this summer brought by Eolas against Microsoft.” Linked from Tomalak’s Realm

Good news, I think. A patent restriction could be really damaging for many browser manufacturers, and the claim appears to be dubious.

It’s the first Wednesday of the month, and that means more security bulletins from Microsoft. This month’s come in two emails titled “Microsoft Windows Security Bulletin Summary for November 2003” and “Microsoft Office Security Bulletin Summary for November 2003” and consist of

• MS03-048 – Cumulative Update for Internet Explorer (824145)
• MS03-049 – Buffer Overrun in the Workstation Service Could Allow
  Code Execution (828749)

• MS03-050 – Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Word and Microsoft
  Excel Could Allow Arbitrary Code to run (831527)

• MS03-051 – Buffer Overrun in Microsoft FrontPage Server
  Extensions Could Allow Code Execution (813360)

All result in “Remote Code Execution” which certainly sounds like a bad thing to me.

You’ll find copies of the bulletins at: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/winnov03.asp and http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/offnov03.asp.

It’s the 46th week of the year.